Posted on 01/24/2007 8:42:52 PM PST by xzins
Malcolm Moore
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Five hundred years after he was killed in battle, the remains of Cesare Borgia, the notorious inspiration for Machiavelli's The Prince, are to be moved into a Spanish church. Banned from holy ground by bishops horrified by his sins, the remains of the ruthless military leader lie, at present, under a pavement in Viana in northern Spain.
Borgia was the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, and was made a cardinal by his father at the age of 17. He was an accomplished murderer by 25 and had conquered a good part of Italy by 27.
He died in Viana in 1507 at the age of 31, after attempting to storm the town's castle and overthrow the Count of Lerin.
He was originally buried beneath the altar of the Church of Santa Maria in the town, in a marble tomb on which was written: "Here lies in little earth one who was feared by all, who held peace and war in his hand."
However, his body was dug up in 1527 when the Bishop of Calahorra visited the town and expressed his outrage that such a sinner was buried in church ground. The tomb was demolished and Cesare Borgia was re-buried in unconsecrated ground, where his body would be "trampled on by men and beasts," according to the bishop.
His remains stayed there until 1945 and locals used to scrupulously avoid the cobbled street March 11, when his ghost was said to be abroad and hungry for vengeance.
After workmen inadvertently dug him up, he was moved in a silver casket to the town hall, where local politicians pleaded with the Catholic Church to let him be buried properly.
The town of Viana looks fondly upon Borgia because of his link with the King of Navarre, whose sister he married. After fleeing the wrath of Pope Julius II, Borgia ended up in charge of his brother-in-law's armies and laid siege to Viana.
A bust of him has been erected in the town, with the inscription: "Captain of the Navarre Army."
But the local bishop rejected the requests for a proper burial and his body was placed under a marble plaque outside the church grounds.
However, Fernando Sebastian Aguilar, the Archbishop of Pamplona, has caved in after more than 50 years of petitions and Borgia will finally be moved back inside the church on March 11, the day before the 500th anniversary of his death. "We have nothing against the transfer of his remains. Whatever he may have done in life, he deserves to be forgiven now," said the local church.
Borgia took control of the papal armies in 1497 following the murder of his brother, and chalked up a series of astonishing military successes. He was greatly admired by Niccolo Machiavelli, who was at his court in 1502 for several months. Machiavelli drew on Borgia's exploits for The Prince - a treatise on the art of acquiring and maintaining political power - and advised politicians to imitate him.
The way in which Borgia pacified the Romagna is described in chapter seven. Borgia's assassination of his rivals in Sinigaglia on New Year's Eve, 1503, is also mentioned.
It is a fair point, and it deserves a fair response, which I hope I may provide:
The Catholic position is not the Pope is guaranteed to be a man of such impeccable holiness that he shall be able to discern with his own, personal, spiritual insight the true Christian doctrines. Any person, and any office is inherent corruptible. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" is not heresy! Indeed, countless Catholic authors, including J.R.R. Tolkein, have upheld precisely that moral message.
The evil tendencies of ecclesiastical authorities have long been recognized by Catholic saints, such as St. John of Antioch, who wrote, "The highway to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." He was not exiled by the Pope for such comments, and, in fact, came to be known by the popes as St. John the Golden-Mouthed. The precise intent of such jarringly strong language (and its approval) was to prevent people from being scandalized by wicked.
I do not know if there is, in fact, a mechanism proposed by which the Holy Spirit does keep the Catholic Church from proclaiming false doctrine; Only as late as Vatican I did the Church infallibly declare how infallible doctrine should be formulated. I am quite sure however the grace works, it has had several means of expressing itself. As related in Pope Fiction, one pope even dropped dead mysteriously between the drafting of an errant biblical commentary and the promulgation of the bull officially endorsing it!
One motive which at least minimizes the need for extraordinary divine assistance, however, is the human recognition of consistency. However evil medieval pope's character may be, they got away with what they did, at least in part, because they never invented doctrine; The Church has condemned as evil actions of indiscriminate violence, while making saints out of those who reconverted Europe through reason and prayer. The Church hardly rebuked violence, making a great many saints out of those who fought the Muslims; rather, it simply found that reason was far more effective, except where motivations were highly tainted (the Germanic lowlands and Great Britain).
Had there been the slightest din of insincerity or inconsistency, such reason would have proved entirely futile.
(That refers to the saints who converted the masses, not to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, but the saints' message was based on the consistency and sincerity of the Church's doctrines.)
Well, first there are all those which you do agree with but apparently you don't realize that you do. For starters, the Catholic Church has vehemently and consistently taught that mankind cannot be saved by works...
Then there are those which you agree with and which are fairly universally held by most Protestants: the Apostles's creed, the New Testament canon, the trinity, the efficacy of grace, the divinity of Christ, the divine presence in the Word, the humanity of Christ, the sovereignty of God...
Then there are those which the Catholic Church has upheld, and your own schism does also, even though the hierarchies of the root church of nearly every hierarchical church tradition (TEC, PCUSA, UMC, etc.) has rejected: the infallibility of scripture, the sanctity of marriage, the defense of the unborn, the rejection of homosexuality, the abolition of birth control and pornography...
As for those issues which you disagree with the Catholic church, can you cite a single instance wherein the Catholic church has actually changed its position? I mean, sure, you like to believe Jerome held the deuterocanonicals to be apocryphal, but certainly Jerome's insistence that he did not, whether forced or not, certainly indicates the position of the Pope at that time. (Such dissent would not be a change of position, prior to Trent.) And certainly many doctrines have evolved; Certainly, transubstantiation is a relatively modern formulation, but can you point to any source who once refuted it?
In all honesty, the positions of the current doctrine which are most difficult to reconcile with ancient doctrine are those which demonstrate charity and fraternity with Protestantism. (And this is not truly a contradiction; the change is that of circumstance. Where once those who were loyal to America were once traitors to the UK, today, they are allies.)
That's a question of interesting theological debate among Catholics. What would happen if the Pope proclaimed blatant heresy; if tomorrow, the Pope stood up and said, "Jesus did not bodily rise from the dead"? Some would argue that such a statement would be discernable as heresy, and, thus, the supposed Pope would be demonstrably an anti-pope. Indeed, some believe that John XXIII and Paul VI were anti-popes because they could not reconcile those pope's attitudes towards Protestantism with those of Trent. Such are called "sedevacantists."
I believe that's an easy way out, a theological cheap shot by those who are unconvinced that the Pope never would proclaim heresy. One of the apologisms for Catholicism is that the true church must be visible. Here, it must be noted that Alexander VI's most notorious, well-document sins (such as the paternity of his son) were before his elevation to the papacy. I can imagine that some pope could be found, by reason of grave sin, to have abandoned the faith, but such an occurrence would need to be spectacularly evident. Absent such a visible sign of apostasy, I would have to argue that the question, "what would happen if a pope proclaimed heresy?", is like the question, "what would happen if a triangle became square." It cannot be.
Of course. Just as you and I are sinners (or dirtbags, I suppose).
>> I was responding to the observation that other churches have leaders who haven't been altogether moral. When was the most recent ecumenical council? When did the last apostle die?<<
But to answer your question anyway...
The last ecumenical council was the 21st, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). While many well-known documents are not on the subject of doctrine, but of governance, several documents are doctrinal, and have been accepted as such by the Pope. The prior councils have been 1870, 1545-1563, 1512-1517, 1414-1418, etc.
>> I was responding to the observation that other churches have leaders who haven't been altogether moral. When was the most recent ecumenical council? When did the last apostle die?<<
But to answer your question anyway...
The last ecumenical council was the 21st, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). While many well-known documents are not on the subject of doctrine, but of governance, several documents are doctrinal, and have been accepted as such by the Pope. The prior councils have been 1870, 1545-1563, 1512-1517, 1414-1418, etc.
The last apostle is believed to have been St. John the evangelist, the only apostle not to be martyred. However, apostolic authority was bestowed by a laying on of hands by the apostles to their successors, the bishops. Such bishops do not have the graces of public revelation, and so have not authored scripture, nor created infallible doctrine. Catholic doctrine does, in fact, hold that all doctrine must be a product of public revelation, and no such revelation has occurred since the days of the apostles. Further, the only certifiably authentic public revelations are revealed in scripture. Hence, the only discrepancy between Catholic doctrine and Sola Scriptura is that the Church maintains that Tradition has preserved the proper understanding of the meaning of scripture.
>> Why would that stop the RCC from using the invention of the printing press to widely distribute Scripture to it's congregants? <<
It didn't. The illiteracy which persisted because of the newness of the press did. Those who were literate could read Latin. The Catholic Douay-Rheims bible (1582) preceded the Saint James Bible (1611), for instance, but relied heavily on Latin terms, because adequate translation into (then-primitive) English was impossible.
One thing about the King James folks is that they are so used to given bible phrases being understood in one way, they often fail to recognize the ambiguity created by the fact that, at that time, English was largely useless for developing complex arguments.
>> If you are implying that all Christianity was united in submission to Roman domination prior to the Reformation I think you will find history proves this is false. <<
We are all quote familar with the existence of alternative patriarchies, such as the Orthodox and Coptic churches. While these churches have not accepted certain Catholic formulations (such as Augustine's original sin, and, hence, the Immaculate Conception), they have not promulgated contrary doctrines, either.
There were, in fact, numerous heresies, and regions in which those heresies persisted. Some, such as the Albigensians, were put down so brutally as even to horrify the Popes who opposed them. But those doctrines which Protestants differ from Catholics on are quite novel.
Christianity was so identified with Rome that King John I of England sought to become a Muslim simply because it had never occurred to him that he could become a Christian and not be subject to Rome. ( The Caliph of Morocco rejected him, because he figured any people able to be ruled by such a twit would make lousy Muslims.)
Your statement is true, and entirely consistent with Catholic doctrine.
>> The allusion to Peter doesn't help. Pentecost was still a number of weeks away. <<
True. Peter's sin was heretical.
>> Behavior should be a charge that would remove someone. <<
I hope I never find out the results of a grave and public sin by a modern pope. I would, however, note that poor administration, no matter how dire the consequences, are not grave sins. Paul VI was a man of unspeakably horrible administration, who did more to destroy that Catholic church than Luther and Calvin and Nero could ever have dreamed. But he was known to be in a state of grave sin.
Paul VI was pretty recent wasn't he?
I didn't know there were issues with him. What did he do wrong?
I think there may be a "not" missing from D's last post ...
Could be. We'll see what he says.
Yup, there was a "not" missing. Paging Dr. Freud...
Oh, and thanks, Bustard...
Which Pope is that?
Were they all infallible or are they only infallible as long as they are Pope? Were they infallible before they were Pope and would they be infallible if they left the Popehood before they died?
Is this infallibility transferable? Do they hand it down from Pope to Pope?
If one Pope changes something a previous Pope said, are they both infallible or is one of them wrong?
Was the Pope who condemned Galileo infallible when he said that the sun revolved around the Earth as a matter of Scripture?
Was the Pope infallible during the Inquisitions?
Was the Pope infallible when the Catholic Church was burning witches?
If he was infallible then, why isn't the Catholic Church still burning witches? I mean if that Pope was infallible, how could any future Pope change the practice and still be infallible?
Questions, questions....
L
I am a protestant and no fan of the Popes, but I would concur among Popes Alexander VI was apostate.
You've never heard of a 60 inch waistline?
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